Night Nappy Training

[Dodaday]

My ds1 will be 4 next February, and is still in night nappies. He's a sound sleeper and very heavy wetter, and wakes up with a soaking nappy every morning. I'm not particularly worried about it at the moment, having read threads and received helpful advice here on the subject. Some have suggested limiting liquid intake during the evening, and making sure the child does a wee before nappy on time and going to bed. However, I'm considering an additional approach. I reckon most children wee in the morning, just before they wake, in fact, it's probably what makes them wake up. After all, the first thing adults do when they wake up is go for a pee, or at least I do! I thought I would try waking ds1 up early, say about 6ish in the morning, to see if I can catch him before he wets his nappy, and try and get him to subconciously relate to what he is doing. I'm wondering whether this is a good idea, or whether anyone else has tried it?

First sentence could have been about my son only he will be 5 next March.

I don't have any experience of your idea. All I know is that it wouldn't work for my son because I know he definitely pees in the night. When he has woken for another reason in the early hours I have checked his nappy and it always has some pee in it.

As a matter of interest, what sort of nappy system do you use at that age?

Do you mean what type of nappies does he wear?
He has Drynites for Boys 4+. They are disposable.

Don't know if this will help but... We have just taken ds1 out of night nappies at his suggestion. He transfered over to reuseables a few weeks before and was wetting quite heavily every night. I was only planning to do it for 1 night and didn't think he was ready really, although I knew he was weeing in his nappy through laziness while still awake. First 2 nights went fine, we got him up for a wee when we went to bed. Than we had maybe 5 days of wet sheets but he was not wetting til maybe 6am (we know this because ds2 still has night feed about 5.30am and we were checking!), so your theory may be right. However, I think it may also have been that with us moving about sorting out ds2 we were disturbing him out of his sleep cycle and he was going back into a deep sleep before weeing (if that makes sense?!).
Good luck!

From the reading I have done, stopping night wetting has very little to do with "learning" not to...its down to when they gain a hormone that stops the kidneys producing wee when you are sleep. They get it anytime between the ages of 2 & 7 years so at 4 yrs your DS is certainly not behind at all.

For Othersideofthechannel: Thanks for that. I was just interested, because I use terry squares, because I find disposables too expensive.

My dd is 4y2m and we use Tots Bots nappies and wraps (size3). Disposables far too expensive and wasteful... and all the other reasons why we used reusables instead of disps.
Dodaday He'll become dry in his own time. It's the hormone thing.

terra is it honestly a hormone?? i thought that they didnt wee while acctually asleep but woke (even slightly) to wee??

maybe im wrong, cant even remember where i heard it, think it could have been something about a woman who potty trained from birth or such like.

Yes it really is...see here for some basic info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinary_incontinence#Urinary_incontinence_in_children

Othersideofthechannel mentions using Drynites for Boys 4+. Can they really cope with a VERY heavy wetter?

I switched to Drynites after getting fed up of changing the bedsheets every other day when DS was wearing Pampers no.6.
Now he occasionally leaks onto his pj bottoms but never onto the bedlinen.

They do cost a fortune but at least where I live they can be recycled.